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Then, casually, he asked, "Did you ever hear of a person by the name of Meleese?" "Meleese Meleese Meleese " repeated the hotel man, running a hand through his hair. "It seems to me that the name is familiar and yet I can't remember " He caught himself in sudden triumph. "Ah, I have it! Two years ago I had a kitchen woman named Meleese." Howland shrugged his shoulders.
But there were times when the "calls" came during the husband's absence, and, if they were urgent, Meleese went alone, trusting to her own splendid strength and courage. A half-breed woman came to her one day, in the dead of winter, from twenty miles across the lake. Her husband had frozen one of his feet, and the "frost malady" would kill him, she said, unless he had help.
His teeth gleamed in the enigmatic smile that had half undone Howland in the fight. "You are mistaken in some things, M'seur," he said quietly. "Until to-day I have fought for you and not against you. But now you have left me but one choice. I will take you to Meleese, and that means " "Good!" cried Howland. "La, la, M'seur not so good as you think.
His eyes traveled to the note on the table and he began searching in his coat pockets. In one of them he found the worn stub of a pencil, and for many minutes after that he was oblivious to the passing of time as he wrote his last words to Meleese. When he had finished he folded the paper and placed it under his watch. At the final moment, before the shot was fired, he would ask Jean to take it.
He strained Meleese to him, and when he looked down into her face he saw her beautiful eyes flooded with tears, and yet shining with a great joy. Her lips trembled as she struggled to speak. Then suddenly she broke from his arms and ran to the door, and Jean Croisset came between them, with the wild bearded man still staring over his shoulder. "M'seur, will you come with us?" said Jean.
"And that 'if' " Jean was straining against the table. "It rests with you, Croisset. I will bargain with you. Either I shall take you back to the Wekusko, hand you over to the authorities and send a force after the others or you shall take me to Meleese. Which shall it be?" "And if I take you to Meleese, M'seur?" Howland straightened, his voice trembling a little with excitement.
And this this note from Meleese is the last thing I have to give you." He dropped a folded bit of paper on the table. Mechanically Howland reached for it. Stunned and speechless, cold with the horror of his death sentence, he smoothed out the note. There were only a few words, apparently written in great haste. "I have been praying for you all night.
Two hours after Meleese and her brothers had left for the South I was following them, shaven of beard and so changed that I was not recognized in the fight on the Great North Trail. Meleese thought that her brothers would make you a prisoner that night without harming you. Her brothers told her how to bring you to their camp. She knew nothing of the ambush until they leaped on you from cover.
He was confident that these men from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be no one to recognize him but Meleese. His heart leaped with joyous hope, and he leaned forward on the sledge to examine Croisset's empty gun.
When Janesse moved to Fort Churchill, where Meleese might learn more in the way of reading and writing and books than her parents could teach her, John Cummins went with her. He went with them to Nelson House, and from there to Split Lake, where Janesse died. From that time, at the age of eighteen, he became the head and support of the home.
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